• Oh no, Ed Miliband has been accused of reneging Clegg-style on a pledge during the Labour leadership campaign when he publicly backed a student and trade union campaign to ban unpaid internships which favour the well-connected. Since he was unlucky enough to win, no less than 13 such interns have been appointed. Ed is supporting "an unpaid intern culture in his own party", says the Intern Aware group, which is organising protest letters. Top sources hint it was only a personal Ed Pledge. So that's all right then.

• Once described by Sky Sports types as "the thinking man's crumpet", Dame Joan Bakewell was introduced to sleep-deprived fellow peers this week as Baroness Bakewell of Stockport. Sure enough, within 24 hours the Lords River Restaurant was cheekily offering their lordships Bakewell tart.

• The coalition will collapse within a year when disgruntled Lib Dem members force the party leadership to pull the plug on the Tories. Who says so? Former Labour heavyweight Lord Denis Healey (93), who, as he reminds audiences, is "always right". He did so again (and again) this week at a Healey-fest organised at the People's Palace in the East End by telly-don and herring-bone suit fanatic, Peter Hennessy, himself now a people's peer. On sparkling form, the old bruiser told a VIP-packed house – ex-rivals David Owen and Nigel Lawson, among them – that he and Gordon Brown were both brilliant chancellors, though the job has got harder since his day. "I feel sorry for George Osborne despite his politics (pause), and his personality." With David Miliband listening, Healey admitted to one error: he should have tried harder to become PM. Lib Dems need not despair. One Healey-era Whitehall mandarin at the back kept muttering "Not true" and "rubbish".

• On top of all his other problems, Pope Benny has a dilemma with the new Spanish ambassador to the Holy See. Reports from Madrid suggest she will be a woman. Not to worry, both Britain and the US have had women ambassadors at the Vatican boys' club. Not to worry about Maria Jesús Figa López-Palop's experience either, she is a 30-year veteran. But Spaniards usually only use their first surname and polyglot Vaticanistas have spotted that in sex-obsessed Italy, "figa" means pussy. Not miaow.

• No need for David Cameron, George Osborne and team to waste our money on hotels when they fly to the plutocrats' summit in Davos. They can all stay with Nick. Clegg's Dutch mum, Hermance, owns a 20-room chalet in nearby Wolfgang, from which her third-born has skied since infancy. But if Cleggster is taking any gifts to the Swiss resort, he'd better raise his game. He gave Sheffield-brewed beer to US vice-president Joe Biden, a teetotaller. For the French PM, he stumped up humble Kendal mint cake, probably recycled. In return, François Fillon gave the lad a cognac from his birth year (1967).

• Strange to hear the word "Caucasian" surface as a term of abuse in news bulletins from post-bomb Moscow. Popular among racial and racist theoreticians of the 19th and early 20th century when Georgians were sometimes deemed the most pure "Caucasians", the word crashed (mostly) with the Third Reich. Now that its mountain peoples are being scapegoated in Russia, it may be time for fans attending the 2014 winter Olympics in Caucasian Sochi to order their body armour.

• Good to see Sky News robustly covering the sexist row that has engulfed its Osterley neighbours in Sky Sport as well as the News of the World's phone-hacking grief. In Rupert Murdoch's high-minded campaign to buy BSkyB, this pluralism could be catching. The Sun has finally reported the hacking controversy which has dogged the NoW since Rupert was a lad of 74. Sharp-eyed Dominic Ponsford, columnist on the trade mag UK Press Gazette, spots that it covered a complaint from ex-MP, Paul Marsden, that his phone was hacked in 2003. By the Mirror.